Rizzos

It WAS a great place. .. until some irresponsible schmuck left their lit cigarette in a plant on the balcony.

So not awesome but not awful– this place is one of the more trendy (Chicago-​like) places in downtown Naper but attracts an. interesting crowd. Drinks were reasonable, granted I just had a beer. Last time I was here my friends and I saw high schoolers sneaking in beer and plastic cups. Wow… luckily the waitress kicked them out or told them to order something. But really, just know that this place will attract those types, Real Housewives of DuPage County types, college kids, and everything in between.

They remodeled the upstairs and in doing so they changed a few things too. To go upstairs you can’t walk up the stairs as soon as you walk in like before, now to go to the second floor you must walk to the basement and take the elevator. What makes it worse is having to wait downstairs with no drinks and wait for one of the bouncers to let you on the elevator. I also noticed some bouncers charging people $ 5 just to skip the line which is unfair to the people who have been waiting there for 15 – 20 minutes.
On the positive side the upstairs looks more modern, music is good but drinks aren’t as good as downstairs.

Rizzos had changed alot just from a month ago. I’m not sure if it’s a better or worst change, I guess it’s too early to tell. Had a fun time but the bouncers are a little richer now since they sell exclusivity to get upstairs. But overall good Friday saturday place.

Eh. So apparently it’s group friendly. Too group friendly. My friends and I went there last Saturday night at about 9 pm and were expecting a nice place to sit down, have a few drinks, and enjoy conversation.
Well, there was no seating left, nothing by the bar, and way, way too loud to talk. Seriously I couldn’t hear my fiancé talking to me, a foot away. It was only when we found a 2 person table near the window that we were able to talk loudly, but not shout. There was also no space to walk. If you wanted to get from one place to the other, it was going to be shimmy-​ing in between people.
The music was really loud. Club music, but no dance floor.
A mixed drink and a cranberry juice without alcohol was $ 14 w/​o tip. wtf. I was expecting like $ 8 for the alcoholic beverage, but not $ 6 for something that wasn’t alcoholic at all.
I don’t think they have a full bar. They said they didn’t have the ability to make a mojito. so I’m guessing they didn’t have mint leaves, since they had club soda, rum, and simple syrup.
While we were there, apparently half of Benedictine University was there as well. Some chick kept on trying to take pictures of me repeatedly, even after I told her no, she couldn’t take a picture with me. Maybe this experience is specific to Saturdays when belligerent college students are out, but I wouldn’t return based on my night there. We left and went to Wise Boxer Pour House down the street. Much better!

Our service was awful. It took about 10 minutes to even get service. Once we received service, we saw the food we had ordered come out, and it sat on the bar for 10 minutes before we had to tell the waitress that our food had been brought out. Needless to say, our food was cold. We asked for blue cheese for our wings, and never received it. We then did get a free round of drinks for the cold food, yet the mixed drink we ordered was pure coke. We ordered a shot to make the «mixed drink» an actual mixed drink, and we were then charged for the shot. Restaurant fail.

I try to avoid this place. The first time I ate here, it was horrible, so I decided to give it another chance — I won’t do that again. The food never improved and I won’t waste my money a third time.
Mostly, however, my experiences were on the weekends at night. This seems to pull in the type of people I wouldn’t want to hang with; similar to the Features crowd. If you do want to dance you can go upstairs, but give yourself 15 minutes to navigate to the dance floor once you’re there, and 40 minutes to get from the floor to the bar, to order a drink and back. Maybe 40 isn’t enough…
The owner (or at least who used to be the owner) is nice and accommodating for the space he has (I tried to host a fashion show here years ago, but logistically it just didn’t work). But that’s not enough to keep me here. I’ll only visit if I have to!

I’ve only been here on crazy weekend nights. I think I would enjoy it more on a weekday, from reading other reviews. I have to give them props on their service for how busy they are, we still saw our waitress a lot for drink refills. It gets too crowded here, and you get touched and shoved a lot more than you’d like. If you can claim a booth, that’s your best bet for safety and service! They have a cool-​looking drink list. Specialty cocktails always impress me. I would come back, but, like most naperville bars, its not at the top of my list of places to go.

This is my first time at Rizzo’s. While I was excited to come and drink for my friend’s birthday, we came early enough for a late dinner. We didn’t get a food menu until we asked, and it took over 10 minutes to get our drinks. When our appetizers were brought over, the four of us weren’t given any plates. When an additional person joined our group, she went straight to the bar for drinks because she didn’t want to wait until the waitress eventually came over. Unfortunately, I felt like the waitresses didn’t care about customers, as they (the waitress) all huddled in the corner flirting with the bouncers.
Update: There were four of us when we asked for plates. Three plates were brought and two sets of utensils.

Full of bros… This college bar has the worst service in town. Bad food, bad company, bad scene.

Now I’m not a big bar scene person, opting more for sitting at home around a bon fire with a good drink and good friends. However, when friends of mine and I went bar hopping for a bachelorette party «meeting» we ended up a Rizzos. I’ve been to Rizzos a few times, however mostly stayed in the back area for larger parties. Little did I know that they have a patio in the back! And not just a regular patio, but one with TONS of outdoor couches and oversized chairs, and fun and relaxing lighting. The couches are arranged so there are three pods that larger groups can occupy, and it makes the area very inviting! The only downfall is that they do allow people to smoke. I know this is an outdoor area, and they’re more than able to smoke outside, however it did ruin a little bit of the experience, inhaling cigar and cigarette smoke all night :(
As for drinks go, the banana split martini was delish… just the right mix of cream and alcohol to make it taste like an adult chocolate milk. The other girls had some fun looking drinks as well… with some of the mixed drinks coming in kitchy mason jars. This is a great place to sit and hang with friends for the night!

Bad service always brings my reviews down. This place is fine, decent drinks at a decent price. Its clean and caters to a young crowd and a fun place to go after a hawks win! The bathroom lines were crazy long, the boys more so than the girls! What I really remember is the awful bartenders. I have never stood at a bar so long for a drink. I felt like she looked right at us and walked by multiple times. She also looked miserable and obviously did not want to be there. Maybe she was a Bruins fan…

No.
Perhaps I am a fuddy-​duddy but I find many more things enjoyable than waiting 30 minutes to use the bathroom then be packed in shoulder to shoulder with bros. Im 26 years old. I love to go out in my home town. Having been in Naperville for a 21^st b-​day party, I just couldn’t handle it. I was reminded of packed house-​party basements from my college years, complete with bros, creepers, and women looking like they fell out of the dressing room of forever 21.
I am all for going out and partying it up but this was too much. Perhaps if I was back in my younger college days this place would be «the place» to go. No thanks. You all have fun.
I do have to laugh; Unilocal asked me if this place was good for dancing. Yes. But I didn’t see much dancing last night. It was more fist pumping and hardly being able to move as everyone was packed in like sardines.

Do NOT come here for the food! It seems like Rizzo’s has given up trying to do even a half-​way decent job of serving food and now focuses just on selling alcohol. That’s fine with me — there is plenty of demand for bars but don’t come here thinking you’re going to get a decent meal.
We have been going to Rizzo’s for burgers and homemade chips every three or four m months since they opened in 2007. They used to serve decent food. However, over the last two years the quality has really declined.
We like to give a restaurant the benefit of the doubt. This last time was the final straw, however. Our burgers were supposed to be medium — and they were RAW in the middle. The homemade chips we used to crave were served COLD AND GREASY. Rizzos has run out of chances with us. Maybe they decided that they can’t compete with all the other burger places in town.
Yeah, the hardbody waitresses are worth ogling and they do have some decent drink specials every once in a while but they’ve obviously decided not to serve decent food anymore, which is odd because Naperville is such a «family town» that they’re missing out on a market segment.

*Warning: This review is based on New Year’s Eve, and I know Rizzo’s is definitely better on other nights.*
I was ready to dance on NYE but didn’t want to pay cover so we headed to nearby downtown Naperville. My husband and I took our friends from out of town here because we’ve danced upstairs in the past on a normal weekend night. It gets crowded, but we have never paid cover or waited in line here and with only one hour left in the night before area bars closed, we went for it.
The top floor was more crowded than usual, which we expected but a few other reasons turned me off:
*Disgustingly messy — scattered bottles, crumpled up napkins and half-​used glasses
*Unnecessary costs — $ 1 for each small cup of water, $ 5 for each coat check
*Awkward service — A burly man watching the door to the women’s bathroom in order to monitor the lines seemed unnecessary. He mostly just hit on women in line.
*Terrible music — Not really danceable, at least between 1 – 2 a.m. Most of the people on the floor were making out and groping any way so I guess it didn’t matter too much at that point in the night.
I am willing to come back — as long as it’s not NYE.

Whenever I’m home from school this is the bar I go to. It is always filled with people around my age, not older creepy types.
The music here is great, and usually after 11 really picks up in the upstairs patio area.
The drink specials are always great, my personal favorite is dollar drafts for every beer on tap on Monday’s.
The food here is really good too, kinda over priced though.
Pros:
— Good drink specials
— Crowd that is relevant to my age group
— Nice atmosphere
Cons:
— Guido types can show up
— Can get hot and crowded

One of the better bars in downtown Napes, in my opinion.
This is the usual place the girls and I enjoy shakin’ our tail feathers at, although the dancing crowd is quite sleazy at times. The downstairs area is nice, if you come early enough to grab a table, and the service is great. There are always great specials; Friday usually was/​is Girl’s Night with $ 4 shots. The only complaint– it can get pretty crowded (with a mix of interesting people). All around, a great place for decently priced drinks and bumpin’ tunes. =)

I totally would have given Rizzos 4 or possibly 5 stars if the waitress hadn’t ruined their star raiting at the end of the evening!
Our group of friends started at Rizzos for our annual Ugly Sweater Bar Crawl. At first, our waitress was on top of things, attentive, the music was great, not to crowded (around 8:30 — 10:00pm). The bar even bought all 10 of us a round of drinks (which was awesome by the way!!!)
My drinks were good (you can’t go wrong with beer!), but a couple other girls said their mixed drinks weren’t the greatest.
So how did the waitress decrease the star rating you ask? It may sound silly, but it annoyed me! At the begnning of the night, I gave her my debit card to start our tab, but I was going to pay with a Visa Gift Card. When my husband got the bill, he gave her our Visa G.C. and our debit card to pay the remaining, and she said she already charged our card we gave her. I said, but we don’t want our bill on that card, and she shrugged her shoulders and walked away! Normally, I would have put up a stink, but we were having such a great night, I didn’t want to bother. But, I have never had a waitress or bartender automatically use the card that you have given them, or at least they give you an opportunity to use a different card!
All in all, it was a solid time there… minus the payment issue!

Recently we stopped in here to get our club on. I’ll admit, I almost fist pumped my arm off but it was all in good fun. We’ll have to see how many more times I’ll be able to do that. Lol the DJ kept us going that night, playing Perculator, Tootsie Roll, Twista, Big Poppa, Warren G,…oohhh yea. Is that old school or what?!
And thanks Candice G. I had no clue they served food here. I’ll have to go back during regular hours.

One of the better spots in the ‘Ville, in my opinion.
The BF and I have come a few times during the day on a weekend or for an early dinner during the week as they often have ½ price wine bottles, ½ price apps, $ 1 draft beers, etc.
Now, I don’t think I could bring myself to come here after 8:00 on a weekend night… a little too suburb clubby for this gal BUT any other time, this place is where it’s at. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they don’t have just your typical bar food.
I’m a fan of their fresh mozzarella bruschetta and the spicy goat cheese and spinach dip, then I like to follow it up with their wedge salad or strawberry spinach salad– both of which make my mouth water. They’ve got a decent veggie burger but it’s not my fave– I’m more likely to get an app or salad as my entrée. The BF likes to go with the Ahi tuna wrap. And dessert equals turtle cookie dough, naturally.
I also really like the servers here. No attitudes and on the times we’ve gone for ½ price wine, the sommelier was great with giving us a good rec so we could get a bottle that the restaurant down the block was charging $ 120 for, for $ 35 at Rizzo’s on half price night.